---
title: Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and slau… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and slaughtered it. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 17

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Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and slaughtered it.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** take, slaughter · **To what, where:** black sheep, flock

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg540:14:17
# text = Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and slaughtered it.
1	Shortly	shortly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
2	after	after	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	1	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	sheep	sheep	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	from	from	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	flock	flock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	slaughtered	slaughter	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | man | the black sheep |  | the flock |  | shortly *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent sheep=Theme from flock=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **slaughter** | past | man *not said here* | flock |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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